


The Catastrophe Monster

by sidnihoudini



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-27
Updated: 2007-02-27
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick’s back the next night, and has to hover around the in-house bar until the blowjob up against his quarter-finished painting is done. </p><p>He walks up as the boy-dancer is slinking away -- Pete, Joe had called him earlier, bitching at him to get down from where he’d crawled up into the ceiling rafters to be alongside the spotlights. Patrick walks up as Pete is walking away, back to the stage, using his thumb to wipe at the corner of his mouth.</p><p>Patrick can’t help the grimace he looks at Pete with, Pete with his swollen lips and raised eyebrows -- like he’s proud that Patrick saw it, like Patrick should be <i>jealous.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Catastrophe Monster

_star-proof i am not._

.

He was an accident. That’s not a harsh reality, it’s just the truth. He was an accident, and his mother was maybe going to abort him, but then she met his father, and even though they’ll never have that biological attachment to each other, he always figured that was better than growing up without a prominent male influence in his life.

Or so his mother used to tell him, anyway, when Pete would be on one side of the bathroom door with a dull butter knife in his hand, and his father would be in the study, bitching and moaning about Pete’s newfound teenaged attitude. 

So for whatever reason, either the condom broke or his mom was just a needy slut, Pete was an accident and managed to retain that sense of almost-urgency that followed him out of the hospital when he was only two days old. It’s the whole “whoops, accident” card that Pete plays whenever his cold, wrinkled mother asks him about the strip club. It was an accident, ma, I promise. They just pay really well.

And it’s an accident that he meets this guy, the Whoever that Joe hired to paint the grand Porno Portrait over the same wall Mindy Whatsername used to bend over. Got herself killed against. Blood washes off, at least after the initial investigation is through, but lead paint stays forever.

“He reminds me of a little field mouse,” Pete comments backstage one night, bent in half as he rubs gold glitter onto the backs of his thighs. He glances through the crack in the door, and wonders if the paint fumes drifting in from the back wall are getting any of his customers high. It’d make his job easier. “Like, he’s not cool enough to be a rat, but not cute enough to be a regular mouse, so he’s stuck in purgatory, a.k.a. field duty. About to be squished by some farmer’s tractor, or something.”

Marty is snorting a line of blow off of her handheld mirror, the one with the bits of cheap-ass rhinestones crazy glued around the frame. Pete glances over his shoulder at her, waiting for a response, and starts to shrug his jacket off.

It’s an accident, ma, he thinks to himself, as he stands up and lets his bones straighten out. That $1200 for a two hour shift won’t be in my pocket forever, I promise. Shit will work itself out, eventually.

.

Joe hired him through a friend. Patrick’s been painting for years, Andy had promised him, as he corkscrewed the wine bottle, full of cheap apricot flavored piss and sherry. A Tuesday night special: at his bar, that’s what it was.

“He’s been painting for years, man,” Andy had promised, leaning over the glossy top of the bar. The thump-thump-thump bass beat from Joe’s attached strip club vibrated against the palm of Andy’s hand as he wiped the counter over. “He’s good, really good. Like, he gives better reflection than a mirror. That good.”

“Is he cheap?” Joe accepted the watered down shot Andy pushed across the counter. The glass left a skid mark of condensation over the newly wiped down surface, and Joe worked at it with the pad of his thumb.

Nodding, Andy tossed the rag. It hit an unopened bottle of bourbon, hidden underneath the counter. Beside the float of money.

“Cheapest,” He’d promised.

So Joe had gone and done it, hired Patrick and found out his day job was apprenticing at some mediocre tattoo-and-brand place down by the water. Joe liked tattoos, especially when they were on that crease right above the hip, and --

“You want me to sketch out softcore porn on the back wall of your crusty strip club?” Patrick had asked, confirmed, as he picked up the peeled off latex gloves and dropped them into some biohazard waste bucket.

Joe nodded. “They’ve finished the investigation, so I want to get some new light in there. The girls don’t really like looking at bl -- “

“Fuck, shut up, shut up,” Patrick had used the back of his arm to cover one ear, and squeezed his eyes closed so hard all he heard was white noise in the other. “I’ll do it, just shut up.”

Pushing away from the counter, Joe had raised his eyebrows. “You’re touchy.”

“Not really,” Patrick had grumbled, pushing up his glasses by the nose. So what if he didn’t want to hear the murder case on some faceless, real nameless stripper.

You couldn’t fault Patrick for that.

.

So he comes in and paints during the night, when the club is crowded with greasy pot-bellied men and their chicken-soak fingers. Patrick ignores the dancers as best he can, it’s easy to forget them when he’s painting, thick globs of pink and purple and gold dripping down the concrete block wall, covering DNA and evidence.

Patrick doesn’t know how someone could murder -- _murder_ \-- some chick out in the open. With everyone watching, with her thong in his pocket after a completely forgettable lap dance. But maybe that’s why he did it. To be the one client she remembered.

When the doors close at 5am, Patrick’s eyes are crusted with sleep and smoke and all he can smell is stale come and sweat. Tiny pieces of gold glitter stick to the inside curve of his nostrils, making him sneeze as he packs up his brushes and paint cans.

Men are still hanging around the parking lot, leaning against the outside of their mini SUVs with cigarettes or worse hanging from their dry mouths. Patrick makes a face and starts towards the sidewalk, carting his paints on one hip. 

Before he makes it to the street, two of the dancers stop him, their noses bright red, eyes wide and dilated. High, stupid, desperate. 

“Hey.” The girl breathes through her mouth, her teeth a set of snarls and snaggles. “I was watching you all night.”

She’s with a guy, the only guy who works there on stage, and they both smell like the sock Patrick used to jerk off in when he still lived in his mother’s attic. He threw that out after the 12th grade, but these two are still hanging on.

“We’re going to Andy’s for some drinks.” The streetlights are hitting all the wrong spots on his face, he looks worn-out, fucked-out. The next one to lean against that back wall and get slapped for it, beaten and killed. “We want you to come with us, mouse.”

“I’m not your mouse,” Patrick grumbles, and fuck workplace karma because he won’t be here next week. The dancers will be, they’ll be here until the day they get too addicted to crawl on-stage. And even then, they’ll try. “And I don’t drink.”

“Liar,” The boy-dancer breathes, nostrils flaring, eyes getting wide. He looks amused and drunk, clutching at the girl-dancer’s waist -- and he’s got good hands, musician hands, like he could play the piano and make a living out of it. They’re not dancer hands, stripper hands, dirty pole hands. “I know who you are. You could drink Andy under the table and he _lives_ in booze.”

“Yeah, well.” Patrick uses his pinky finger to rub at the corner of his smoke stained eye. “I don’t drink with the homeless, priests, or strippers. So.”

The boy grins wide. “Well, I’m two of those three, but if you give me half an hour I’m sure someone on the internet will ordain me.”

“You’re funny,” Patrick deadpans, already stepping backwards. “But I have to be up in three hours to work a double shift at the place I plan on owning half of someday, so I’ll see you when I see you.”

Behind him, Patrick hears the shuffle of shoe against concrete, and the girl-dancer saying, “I bet he works at like, Microsoft or something.”

“Field mouse,” The boy mutters, turning away. “Just waiting to get stepped on.”

.

Patrick’s back the next night, and has to hover around the in-house bar until the blowjob up against his quarter-finished painting is done. 

He walks up as the boy-dancer is slinking away -- Pete, Joe had called him earlier, bitching at him to get down from where he’d crawled up into the ceiling rafters to be alongside the spotlights. Patrick walks up as Pete is walking away, back to the stage, using his thumb to wipe at the corner of his mouth.

Patrick can’t help the grimace he looks at Pete with, Pete with his swollen lips and raised eyebrows -- like he’s proud that Patrick saw it, like Patrick should be _jealous._

Grinning around the money stuffed in the top hem of his shorts, Pete makes an obscene gesture at maybe Patrick, or maybe the other boy standing behind Patrick.

Patrick throws the finger at Pete and grimaces again. White fucking trash slime.

The client is still heaving, leaning back against Patrick’s portrait of Mandy-Dandy-Miss-Whoever bent in half, hands gripping her ankles. Patrick looks at his mural with disgust, looks at the client with disgust.

Feels dirty-palmed as he lays his paints out, sucking off the tip of his paintbrush just to get that point perfect.

Behind him, on the main stage, his stage, Pete grins down at the crowd and leans back against the pole, opening his mouth wide as he slides down, knees buckling, heart triple timing to the thick bass beat in the air.

The air thick with sound and smell and spunk, Patrick presses his brush to the concrete, and drags a wide bleeding line of orange across the mirror image stage.

.

“I’m going to win over your affection,” Pete promises, looking marginally cleaner after a shower at some take-home client’s house. Patrick’s been working on the mural for a week now, Joe wants it extended to a second wall.

It’s turning the clients on, he says, and staples another stand of mini-lights across the ceiling just before opening time.

“ _I’m_ turning the clients on.”

Pete mostly fades into the background noise of the club as Patrick chews the cuticle of his thumbnail, and takes a step back to examine his work.

Whoever the girl is, stretched across the wall, she has one boob smaller than the other, and eyes that are different shades of green. Patrick wonders if he did it on maybe-purpose, or if it was an accident.

.

Everyone goes to Andy’s for Halloween. 

Patrick hmms and haws his way through a laundry list of decent excuses, saying his friend is having one bash or another, his sister needs him to take her son trick-or-treating, but ends up wedged between Marty and Pete in one of Andy’s VIP booths. Marty’s got a damp layer of coke drying around her nostrils, like somebody wiped an icing paste over her top lip and never licked it off.

She hasn’t showered since last shift, and neither has Pete. Patrick leaves the bar that night smelling like spray-on tan and spermicidal solution, glitter stuck to his clothes on one side and a row of fake eyelashes on the other. He’s a bit drunk so he doesn’t care that much, he even laughs when Pete draws on the side of his face with Marty’s pencil make-up.

Pete’s wearing a little french maid’s hat that he stole out of the prop box at Joe’s, and Marty’s got the matching black-white-black corset. But Pete’s got the hat, and it keeps slipping as he holds the bottom of Patrick’s face with one hand, palm against Patrick’s Adam’s apple, thumb pressed flat and squishing his cheek.

“Stop _moving,_ ” He slurs, drunk on cranberry mixed with apricot wine. “My whiskers are crooked...” Pete licks his thumb and rubs it against the corner of Patrick’s mouth, smudging the eyeliner artwork. “Now hold _still_ , damnit.”

Patrick does.

.

He also wakes up the next morning in the backseat of Pete’s car (house), with a throbbing headache and the distinct feeling of being very, very late for work.

(Accident, Pete reasons, quite a few days later. A complete accident. That time I stuck my hand down your pants? Total accident. Getting you drunk with all those competitive shot-duels? Kind of intentional, but mostly still an accident.)

“Fuck, oh God, I’m going to -- ” Patrick had thrown the car door open and puked all down the side of Pete’s Ford, booze and guts and misery splashed against the rusted paint job and paved parking lot. 

Patrick’s head, jumbled with too much -- they didn’t really, did they? If they did, did Patrick even wear a condom? Oh fuck, he just fucked a _stripper._

“Hey, it’s okay.” Pete’s trying to rub Patrick’s back, but it just makes Patrick heave and bend forward more. “Patrick.”

Muttering to himself, puke lined mouth in his hands, Patrick leans further out of the backseat, and smears the eyeliner mouse whiskers up his neck, into his hairline. 

“Oh God,” He whispers, ignoring Pete behind him, waving to the mini van full of middle aged women and children pulling into the spot next to them. Pete forgot this was Wal-mart, just like Patrick forgot to put his pants back on.

.

It’s not even a full hour later that has Patrick getting reamed out by Adam, the guy he’s apprenticing under. He’s on his way home from the 24 hour clinic. They stuck a variety of needles all along the line of his arm, because apparently his veins are hard to find. Patrick hopes they’re not just riddled with STDs and weighed down with the knowledge Patrick fucked up big time.

No condom, no brains. Definite penetration.

“I’m coming right now,” Patrick says, running a red light. “I had a family emergency, Adam, I’m _sorry_ \-- “

When he bursts through the front door of the shop, Adam says something like he knew Patrick hasn’t been committed this whole time, promises that he’s got a line of people going around the building (for _christ’s_ sake) and they would all _kill_ for an opportunity like Patrick’s got.

Patrick nods and nods and shuffles his feet and nods, nods, nods, trying not to blurt out, _I fucked a stripper and it’s a possibility that now I shouldn’t be working with open wounds at all._

He apologizes again, and scurries when Adam snaps the first order of the day. 

Like a little fucking field mouse, he scurries.

.

“At least you can’t get knocked up,” Marty says, looking on the bright side of things as she knots up her flashy pink, half see-thru stiletto. Pete rubs his hands over his face, and almost feels sick at the thought of glitter and gold. 

Joe walks into the back room at the moment Marty says ‘knocked up.’

“Aw fuck, you’re not serious.” Joe looks at her wide-eyed. “Not _again._ ”

Her shoelaces are so tight Pete sees the irritated red lines already. He rolls his head to the side and feels his cheeks stretch as he eyes Joe, still boggled-looking.

“No, _Joe_ ,” Marty breathes, standing up. Teeter-totting. “Pete.”

Joe shakes his head, and braces one hand against the doorframe. “Whatever, dude. As long as you’re on the floor in ten. Patrick’s not here tonight, you can work the wall.”

“Okay.” Pete’s stomach turns over. Maybe Patrick gave him a 24 hour bug or something, Pete bets that’s what the bastard did to him. Worried about STDs and shit, and Pete got a _stomach flu._ He starts to stand up. “Why’s he not coming, anyway?”

“The guy he interns for is wicked mad.” Joe flips his hand around and starts to turn back towards the club entrance. “I don’t know. He’s here tomorrow and Saturday.”

Pete undoes his belt buckle.

“Oh.”

.

“Holy fuck, the -- what?” 

The tube of glitter spills as Pete falls back against the wall, hands up like he’s in surrender, and maybe he is, with his eyes wide and lips still suck-swollen.

“You gave me the fucking _SYPH,_ ” Patrick snarls in his face, eyes narrowed and boy, he’s mad. Pete hasn’t seen him for a week and this is the hello he gets. 

Pete wiggles his shoulders but Patrick’s got him held tight. “I what?”

“Syphilis, you dick!” He bitches, all up in Pete’s face. “You gave it to me!”

Not knowing what else to say, Pete leans back against the locker and half grimaces, half chews the inside of his mouth.

“Goddamnit.” Patrick shoves him away, and stalks into the other room.

Pete eyes his glitter, spilled all over the floor and half trailing after Patrick, like it knows something.

.

Patrick paints with fucking _authority_ the next couple of nights. Pete’s not working because he’s still got something funky happening in his stomach and mouth, and Joe’s pretty sure none of his customers want to be drooled and puked all over. He puts Pete on management-duty instead, picking out the easiest looking suits in the crowd. 

Too many years, and Pete’s got an eye trained for this.

He watches Patrick when the crowd starts thinning. Patrick with his funny-angled wrist and squinted eyes, standing so close to the wall the tips of his shoes are starting to get paint stained. 

The whole night he tries to figure out the best way to apologize for the whole Syph thing, even when he’s thumbing the backbone of Marty and trying to direct her towards New Suit & Wristwatch. She’s hammered or drugged or both, and Pete almost feels bad when she stumbles against a drink table and just about lights her black boa on fire.

“Goddamn,” He whispers under his breath, turning away.

.

Patrick finishes up his job three days later and gets his last wad of $100 bills. Joe’s happy with the work -- real happy -- and says so, patting Patrick’s back and grinning wide and buying a round for everyone. Pete stays quiet, mostly, which has never been a real character flaw, and hides with Marty against the far side of the bar, where she’s coming down from the E.

“I’ll see ya,” Pete hears Patrick saying, pretty happy and waving over his shoulder, Pete watches Patrick wave over his shoulder at Joe. “Thanks, man.”

“Yo!” Andy calls after him, jumping a bit behind the counter. “Comp drinks on the house next time! I swear!”

Patrick grins all coy like he has something hidden still, feels the cash in his pants pocket, and ducks shoulder first out the door.

.

The next night is Pete’s first turn back on the main stage. Marty passed out the night Patrick left the bar, Pete hasn’t seen her since. He worries even when he shouldn’t be worried, and bugs Joe all night until he gets fed up and sends some hack from lighting out to find her. 

“Whatever, Pete,” Joe breathes, pushing at his shoulder. “Just make the fucking money, yeah? We’ll figure her out later.”

Later, Pete thinks to himself, climbing up onto the stage with a drag in his stomach and a stop in his heart. Of course.

.

The police call it an act of passion. The scratch marks stretched long over his back, his chest and the deep wounds across his cheeks. A white trash break-up, one second of a power trip and she was dead. Accidental murder at the hand of her dealer boyfriend.

Pete throws up with one hand braced against the side of his truck for what seems like hours, retching and curling and thinking of her dumb, pretty face. His fingers twist against the rusted metal, and he has that taste in his mouth. Bleach and raw meat.

“I’m out,” Pete had told Joe earlier in the day, one hand held out in front, like he had to steady himself against empty space. Joe had been confused, what, it was only another dead girl -- she’s nothing, a blip in the radar. Pete’s mouth had watered with that sweet spit that came before bile, and he’d stepped backwards. “No, dude. I’m out, I’m so out.”

.

Patrick’s burning himself on the autoclave machine for the hundredth fucking time when someone starts banging on the front doors, old barn doors with restored glass and tropical colored paint.

“We’re closed,” He yells over his shoulder, stepping sideways to turn the sink tap on and drown his wrist in cold water. It never helps, nothing stops melted skin from pinching tight.

The banging keeps on, until Patrick’s got a headache and is ready to open fire on whoever it is fucking up his last task of the night. Grumbling under his breath, Patrick twists the tap off, hard, and almost breaks the knob into his palm.

When he gets to the door, he’s kind of (but mostly not) surprised to see Pete standing there, looking desperate in day old clothes or worse.

“Open!” Pete yells from behind the window, voice quietly muffled. “I need to -- open the door!”

 _You’re a stripper or a prostitute or what the fuck ever and I don’t trust you one bit_ , Patrick thinks to himself, remembering all those ABC documentaries about street life and he’ll never forget that one chick who picked at her arms until her bones showed because the meth made her think she had aphids in there. 

“Why?” Patrick doesn’t reach for the lock, doesn’t ask what’s wrong.

Pete’s hands are straining up against the window, shaking. Patrick folds his across his chest so they won’t twitch. 

“Marty’s dead,” Pete says, loud. A pause. “But I’m not.”

Squinting his eyes, Patrick gets a flash of this and that, possible memories that were probably just sparked from other people’s hey, _remember when.._.’s.

“Neither am I,” Patrick calls through the door. “Congratulations.”

.

The only person that will hire him is the acne riddled teenaged manager at McDonalds. Pete flips hamburgers for twelve hours a day because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Patrick tells Adam to go fuck himself after a particularly heated argument over one of the vinyl tattoo chairs. He winds up working as a clerical assistant at a dentist’s office from 9 to 5, and files Joe’s records twice after whitening and filling appointments. 

When Joe appears in front of Patrick’s semi-podium, weighed down with appointment logs and patient records, they speak like they’ve never met each other before, like those nights never existed and the portrait was some kind of celestial gift from God.

And Patrick likes it that way, likes being the anonymous compatriot who visited the underworld once and got a fucking STD and $3100 out of it. He stamps a business card with Joe’s next appointment date and time, then hands it over.

Joe takes it, quietly.

.

Patrick will never remember Halloween night, when he stumbled after Pete and almost fell out of the truck while trying to get into it. What he does remember will be fogged with an alcoholic haze, just brief flashes of clothing and teeth.

He won’t remember Pete, not Halloween-night Pete, who drew mouse whiskers across his cheeks and thumbed the line of his jaw too many times. He’ll remember pink lights and purple stained skin, confident hips and arrogant, sunken cheekbones. 

“Fall for me,” Pete had whispered, drunken-desperately, crawling across Patrick’s lap half clothed but half not. He’d smudged the black stained whiskers with the pads of his thumbs. “Goddamnit,” A shake of Patrick’s loose, drunken head, neck snapping from front to back. “I don’t want it anymore.”

And then:

“We’ll do it, perfect. Together. Just -- ” 

These are all the things Patrick will never remember.


End file.
